Haven't heard this one since the night it was played. It was my first show and a smoker from the sound of it now, but it took me two years to find these guys again, and then another year before things got seriously weird, and of course it's been long and strange ever since.

The recording is a bit rough around the edges at times, but the energy of the boys and the rowdy Chi-town crowd make up for any fidelity shortcomings. The Scarlet->Fire is pretty tasty, despite Weir's slide-not-yet-quite-mastered near the end of Fire. The jam out of Space into Black Peter is absolutely ferocious, and the "run and see" Peter outro is pretty smoking too. The Truckin' is just flat out sick. It comes on raging in fifth gear, and the crowd is on top of it and pushing the boys for more, more, more. The band beyond description delivers eternal tightrope crescendo after crescendo and finally breathlessly bombs beyond believing before Jerry takes us all the way down to microscopic before the last triumphant rushing rise of one night's joyous cacophony. I look back and listen now and see my baptism and know, twenty-six years and some change later, that I will be forever grateful, forever dead.